D-Link EBR-2310/RE 4-Port 10/100 Switch Wired Ethernet Router (Refurbished)

I bought this router to be able to add wired connections to my Apple Airport Express. It worked using bridge mode but it is far from ideal. It occasionally will drop all connections if there is a lot of data going through it. I think this is probably a firmware issue since it never happened with my airport express alone. Also the data rate seems to have dropped - I used to get 30Mbps when my computer was connected via ethernet to my cable modem directly, and around 25Mbps when using my Airport Express alone, but now it has dropped to around 9-10Mbps. It's still enough for my needs but I really expected better from D-link. After an online search it appears that many people with this router are having the same issues, so I don't think it's just because this one is refurbished. I picked this up for $15 so I don't feel too bad about it but in retrospect I would probably have gone for a different router. Not recommended.

I hit a few web sites, rapidly, and then this router would fail to connect to a remote site -- to the internet -- for minutes. Not sure if it is related to the dropped packets that I saw in the logs and others have reported. I didn't spend too much time trying to reconfigure or determine the root cause -- after 30 minutes tinkering with the web-based config, and seeing no improvement, I sent it back.

After half a dozen or so routers, this was by far the worst experience I've had.

here's what works consistently and concurrently for me: web browsing, aim, xmpp (gchat), ssh... in fact, anything that does not require port forwarding. as for what causes problems: applications that require port forwarding. these are things like bittorrent and certain online games. the application that needs port forwarding actually works fine, but while that application is running, things like web browsing become spotty. pages take a long time to load or timeout completely.